In 2014, Sanctuary fans celebrated when the legendary metal outfit made their four year reunion official with the release in The Year The Sun Died. The music was distinctly Sanctuary courtesy of guitarist Lenny Rutledge’s style, albeit fatter and heavier thanks to modern day production values, but some people were put off by the absence of frontman Warrel Dane’s – formerly of Nevermore – signature ’80s high end vocals and assorted shrieks. It was an unfair criticism given Sanctuary’s classic albums Refuge Denied and Into The Mirror Black were released in 1988 and 1990 respectively – the man’s voice had simply aged with him – and it certainly wasn’t enough to halt the band’s forward momentum. Work is building slowly for a follow-up, tentatively titled Dead Again, but in the meantime Sanctuary fans can feast on Inception. Dubbed a prequel to Refuge Denied, the record features remixed and remastered demo recordings from 1986 that were all but forgotten until Rutledge stumbled across them by accident.

“I didn’t realize they were stored where they were stored,” Rutledge says in what has become a well worn story by this point. “I did some recordings of other bands in the mid-’90s, so I would find miscellaneous tapes here and there; they weren’t stored in any organized fashion. I’d forgotten about the Sanctuary tapes. I have a two-storey barn and the top floor is all messed up, it leaks, there are squirrels and birds up there… it’s just like a barn on any property. The lower part was converted into a studio, which is really nice, so going upstairs you’re in a completely different world (laughs). I happened to be up there looking for some stuff and I came across the box that had those particular Sanctuary tapes in it. It was a surprise to find them, and to find them in the condition they were in. My heart kinda sank because those tapes had been up there for 15 years, and when I discovered them I was sure I made a big mistake by not keeping track of them.” Continue Reading

In early 2011, Seattle’s conquering sons Nevermore unexpectedly slammed the brakes on their career after almost 20 years in the trenches. The quartet – Warrel Dane (vocals), Jeff Loomis (guitars), Jim Sheppard (bass) and Van Williams (drums) – cited creative and personal differences as the cause for the parting of ways, shocking their loyal fanbase. Dane went on to re-launch Sanctuary in 2014 and Loomis was tagged to join Arch Enemy, replacing Nick Cordle. The former was expected, the latter was a complete surprise, but most Nevermore fans seem to have made peace with the changes even though there seemingly has never been a concrete explanation as to what brought about Nevermore’s (supposed) demise. Given the opportunity to sit down with Loomis during a stop on Arch Enemy’s late summer European tour, I asked him to shed some light on the matter.

“Nevermore was together for 18 years, and it was one of those things where everybody in the band at that time – five years ago now – was drinking heavily” Loomis reveals. “We all had a problem; it’s not fair to put the blame on one person for any of that. We wanted some changes in the band, we wanted everyone to quit drinking, but we were all too stubborn. Then the ultimatum came that if we didn’t quit drinking we’re not going to tour anymore, and that’s basically what ended the whole thing. I also think that after being together for so long and going through so many ups and downs, nobody could take it anymore. All I can say is that I’m very proud of what we did in Nevermore, we still have a huge following to this day, but as with anything in life there are other chapters and the page had to be turned to something else.”

“For me personally it was a big breather to be able to live a normal life for a while,” he adds. “I still talk to Van and Warrel, I don’t really speak to Jim too much anymore, and I hear he’s out of the business now. Everybody is doing something musically, it’s just not Nevermore. Warrel’s got Sanctuary, of course, and he’s doing a Nevermore touring cover band kinda thing. Van has Ghost Ship Octavius, which is really cool.” Continue Reading

Nevermore has been a regular and welcome guest in the house that Metal Tim Henderson built pretty much since BW&BK’s inception. More often than not, vocalist Warrel Dane has been the one to step up (or be lured into) spending time talking music and related chaos with the BraveWords family, and we’ve never come away from a conversation with the man disappointed. Over the past 20 years the question of a Sanctuary reunion has been raised repeatedly, more as our running joke for the past decade given that every metal mag big and small poked Dane and bassist Jim Sheppard with questions abour resurrecting their former band. Dane maintained he was dead set against the idea, saying people should be happy with Refuge Denied (’87) and Into The Mirror Black (’89), but he changed his tune in 2010 revealing Sanctuary would release a new album featuring most of the original line-up. Four years and a handful of reunion shows later, main songwriters Dane and guitarist Lenny Rutledge have made good on their threat with The Year The Sun Died.

Dane: “We don’t like to call it a reunion; we refer to it as a re-invention (laughs).This record doesn’t sound like the first record, and I think it may be a bit closer to Into The Mirror Black. Kind of like the brother or sister to the Mirror Black record with bigger hooks.”

Given Dane’s long-standing resistance to even entertaining a Sanctuary reunion, Nevermore’s (supposed) demise in 2011 made for one hell of a push to follow through with it. He doesn’t officially acknowledge it as a factor, and it turns out there were other forces at work in putting Sanctuary back together. One of them was actor and Tenacious D mastermind Jack Black.

Rutledge: “One of the things was getting an offer to use one of our songs in a game called Brutal Legend. That got us talking a lot and we discussed the possibility of maybe getting together, doing some shows and having some fun with it. We did that and we discovered the chemistry was still there. I had a couple songs in my back pocket that I was holding on to for what I thought would be for Warrel some day, never really knowing if we would actually get together. We started working on these songs and it was like being back in the ’80s. That chemistry started to develop again and we ran with it.” Continue Reading

During my recent interview with Nevermore frontman Warrel Dane for the band’s new killer of an album, The Obsidian Conspiracy (found here) we discussed their latest round of cover songs that accompany the release as bonus tracks, ‘The Crystal Ship’ by The Doors and ‘Temptation’ by The Tea Party. The cover of ‘Temptation’ was of particular interest to me due to the fact that The Tea Party is a cult favourite in Canada and easily one of the most underrated bands in the world (in my humble opinion). Like Rush, they are revered at home to the point that Canadian citizens claiming not to like The Tea Party risk having their passports revoked.

“I would hope so,” laughs Dane. “It’s really weird that they were so fucking popular in Canada and Australia, but in the US they never hit. I have no idea why that is. Any of my friends that know me really well know that I worship that band. I’ve turned them all on to The Tea Party and they’re all like ‘Why isn’t this band fucking legendary?’ Well, they are, but they just don’t sell huge numbers of records.”

“I fucking love The Tea Party so much, but that’s actually not the song I wanted to do. I wanted to do ‘Transmission’ because that’s my favourite Tea Party song besides ‘Sister Awake’. It turned out good, though. The way we approach covers is normally deconstructing them and recreating them. That one is a little more straight ahead because the song didn’t call for something like the way we fucked up ‘The Sound Of Silence’.” Continue Reading

** Please note that all text on CarlBegai.com (headlines, articles, stories, interviews, reviews, musings) and watermarked photos are copyright of Carl Begai and carlbegai.com. I can't very well prevent you from cutting and pasting content to make your own websites even more interesting, but if you're going to do so please give credit where it's due. I'm fully capable of giving a legal stomping to people who think they're being clever, but I'd much rather not go down that road. Life is too short to waste it on unpleasant things.